WASHINGTON — Even with fighting raging in Syria and President Bashar
al-Assad digging in, the State Department and Pentagon are quietly
sharpening plans to cope with a flood of refugees, help maintain
basic health and municipal services, restart a shattered economy and
avoid a security vacuum in the wake of Mr. Assad’s fall,
administration officials say.

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Mindful of American mistakes following the invasion of Iraq in 2003,
both agencies have created a number of cells to draft plans for what
many officials expect to be a chaotic, violent aftermath that could
spread instability over Syria’s borders, even though no official
could predict whether Mr. Assad’s demise was weeks or months away.

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The State Department is considering positioning additional food and
medical supplies in the region and is studying how to dismantle the
raft of American and European sanctions against Syria quickly to
allow investment to flow in and business to resume, avoiding further
deterioration of life for ordinary people.

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It is also pressing the opposition in Syria to avoid harsh
retaliation against the army, the police and the municipal agencies
of Mr. Assad’s government that could cause a security vacuum and a
collapse of services. Looting and chaos after the overthrow of Saddam
Hussein in Iraq in 2003 planted the seeds of a lasting insurgency.

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“We don’t want them to dissolve all the institutions in place,” an
administration official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity
to discuss planning that is largely being conducted out of public
view.

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Even though the White House has all but ruled out military
intervention, the Pentagon is drafting contingency plans for
operations with NATO or regional allies to manage a large flow of
refugees over Syria’s borders and safeguard the country’s arsenal of
chemical weapons.

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The administration’s efforts have been driven by a bleak prognosis
shared by most officials: Mr. Assad’s fall would be likely to set off
a grave, potentially violent and unpredictable implosion in a country
strained by even more tribal, ethnic and sectarian divisions than
Iraq, possibly in the midst of a presidential election campaign at
home.

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“The main question we’re looking at is how it all plays out after the
Assad regime collapses,” one American official said. “Chapter 1 is
he’s gone. Chapter 2 is the post-Assad transition, and initial
efforts at stabilization. Chapter 3 is completely unknown, and
therefore more than a little scary.”

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The planning is particularly delicate because the Obama
administration does not want to create the appearance of American
interference in a transitional, post-Assad government, even though
the United States would inevitably be entangled in any turmoil that
resulted.

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Rafif Jouejati, an American of Syrian ancestry who is a spokeswoman
for a network of activists in Syria, said those committed to Mr.
Assad’s removal had no interest in “a foreign transition plan,”
however well intentioned.

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“What we don’t want to do is descend into the total chaos that Iraq
did,” said Ms. Jouejati, who is participating in a similar planning
effort among Syrian activists coordinated through the United States
Institute of Peace, an independent but Congressionally financed
organization in Washington. Even so, she added, “I don’t think we
want the United States to impose lessons learned here.”

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The State Department and Pentagon planning efforts became more
systematic last month after hopes for an internationally brokered
resolution faltered in the face of Russian and Chinese opposition in
the United Nations Security Council. The planning is being closely
coordinated with regional allies like Turkey, Jordan and Israel, and
it coincides with an expansion of overt and covert American and
foreign assistance to Syria’s increasingly potent rebel fighters.

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While the administration has ruled out arming the rebels directly,
the administration has authorized $25 million in direct assistance
for medical supplies and communication equipment to help the fighters
and civilian opponents of Mr. Assad coordinate their activities and,
crucially, disseminate reports about the fighting to the rest of the
world.

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Other countries, including Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, are
providing weapons, assisted by a small number of officers from the
Central Intelligence Agency who are vetting the fighters receiving
them and working with State Department officials trying to unify the
fighters with political leaders inside and outside the country. Last
month, the Treasury Department granted a waiver to let a new American
organization, the Syrian Support Group, raise money for the rebels
despite the sanctions that prohibit most financial transactions in
Syria.

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On Thursday, President Obama also announced a $12 million increase in
humanitarian aid, bringing the total to $76 million, largely
distributed through international organizations like the World Food
Program.

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The State Department effort is being coordinated by Deputy Secretary
of State William J. Burns, who worked in the Near Eastern Affairs
Bureau during the planning for the American invasion of Iraq in 2003,
when the department clashed with the Pentagon over what to do after
Mr. Hussein’s fall. The department has created a number of separate
cells devoted to aspects of a post-Assad Syria, including
humanitarian issues, economic reconstruction, security, the
stockpiles of chemical weapons and a political transition.

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The last is led by the American ambassador to Syria, Robert S. Ford,
who closed the embassy in Damascus in February amid deteriorating
security there and is now based in Washington. Mr. Ford met in Cairo
last week with more than 250 Syrians to shape plans for the inchoate
opposition groups to form a transitional government. That meeting
followed a larger gathering of Mr. Assad’s opponents last month,
organized by the Arab League.

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The Pentagon, along with Central Command, has established a similar
group of planning cells, known as “crisis action teams,” focused on
contingencies that could involve the American military. Senior
officials declined to give the number and emphasized that such cells
are created whenever potential crises emerge.

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The range of plans being drafted, however, underscored the gravity of
the risks. Atop the list is protecting Syria’s chemical weapons,
which its leaders acknowledged possessing when vowing last month to
use them only in the event of a foreign invasion. “That would be a
purely military-type mission, and so we have to think about
contingency planning for safeguarding these stockpiles,” one official
said.

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The Pentagon has also offered Jordan and Turkey assistance in
defending their borders and managing the influx of refugees, as well
as ensuring the delivery of humanitarian supplies. Defense Secretary
Leon E. Panetta discussed these issues with King Abdullah II of
Jordan in Amman on Thursday, said the Pentagon’s press secretary,
George Little, who declined to discuss specific contingency planning.

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Some experts and some lawmakers on Capitol Hill have criticized the
administration for not devoting more effort and money to assist Mr.
Assad’s opponents, including the rebel fighters and emerging
political leaders inside and outside the country.

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“This is certainly a useful exercise,” James Dobbins, the director of
the International Security and Defense Policy Center of the RAND
Corporation, told the Senate’s Committee on Foreign Relations on
Wednesday, referring to the State Department’s planning. “Yet
planning divorced from resources and power, as these efforts
necessarily are, will have only limited impact on actual events.”
(Copyright 2012 The New York Times Company 08/05/12)